On This Day in History

• The Ensisheim meteorite, the oldest meteorite with a known date of impact, lands in a French wheat field (1861)
• The first mass emancipation of slaves in North America takes place in Virginia, offering freedom to slaves who will fight for the British (1775)
• The Battle of Tippecanoe takes place during Tecumseh’s War, giving future US President William Henry Harrison his nickname (1811)
• Abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy is shot dead by a mob trying to destroy his press (1837)
• Thomas Nast publishes the first cartoon using an elephant as the symbol of the Republican Party (1874)
• Canada’s first transcontinental railway is completed (1885)
• Colorado women get the right to vote (the second US state to grant this) (1893)
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are killed in Bolivia (1908)
• The first air freight shipment takes place (1910)
• Jeanette Rankin becomes the first woman elected to the US Congress (1916)
• The October Revolution in Russia begins (1917 — it was October 25 in the Julian calendar)
• Over 10,000 suspected US communists are arrested in the first Palmer Raid (1919)
• Fiorello LaGuardia becomes mayor of New York City (1933)
• FDR is elected US president for the fourth time (1944)
• Carl B. Stokes becomes the first African-American mayor of a major American city (Cleveland, 1967)
• Douglas Wilder is elected the first African-American governor in US history (Virginia, 1989)
• David Dinkins becomes the first African-American elected mayor of New York City (1989)
• Mary Robinson becomes the first female president of Ireland (1990)
• NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor (1996)\

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